


Kiss Me Once, Kiss Me Twice

by WildnessBecomesYou



Category: Ratched (TV)
Genre: Angst, Cancer, Episode 7, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, the kiss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-10
Updated: 2020-10-10
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:08:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26934862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WildnessBecomesYou/pseuds/WildnessBecomesYou
Summary: The Kiss (you know which one), from Gwendolyn's perspective.
Relationships: Gwendolyn Briggs/Mildred Ratched
Comments: 27
Kudos: 151





	Kiss Me Once, Kiss Me Twice

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SBWomenofMarvel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SBWomenofMarvel/gifts).



> At SBWomenofMarvel's request, I let Gwendolyn take over my fingers. 
> 
> And oh boy, y'all, she's very poetical and honest to gods I actually cried when Mildred went "We'll find someone"
> 
> Argh, our poor babies. Hope you enjoy!
> 
> (Title from It's Been a Long, Long Time, because I'm a nerd. And it pairs pretty well with this if you want to amp up your pain.)

Gwendolyn has barely recovered when there’s a knock on her door. She assumes, for a moment, that it will be Trevor, who will shoulder his way in and wrap her in that hug of his and demand that she let him stay until she’s ready to leave. And honestly, that would be nice.

Instead, she’s faced with Mildred Ratched. 

And it hurts. 

The woman is wearing the same pale rose blouse she’d worn the first time she’d eaten oysters; the same earrings, a different hat, the same deep red lipstick. She wants to reach out and touch her skin— the soft slope of her jaw, rounded apples of her cheek.

“I was hoping we could talk."

She settles for balling up her fist instead and setting her jaw, breathing through the barely-hidden tears. She’d be getting no break today. 

She doesn’t want to let Mildred in, would rather keep up the cold demeanor and send her away, but something in her breaks. Mildred’s eyes shine up at her and her lips twist in a hopeful smile, and Gwendolyn is a goner. 

She always had been for Mildred. From the moment she’d seen Mildred handling a retching patient, telling the governor not to touch her like that, Gwendolyn’s heart had focused in on Mildred, and she couldn’t stop. This— this attraction, this emotion, whatever you cared to call it— hadn’t happened since Penny, and well… 

Penny had gone to War. Gwendolyn had been left behind. She knew that pain, and she didn’t wish it on anyone, and if she could just push Mildred away enough, perhaps Mildred wouldn’t have to suffer it. 

Gwendolyn steps back, allowing Mildred in, and doesn't miss the way that Mildred inhales slightly at the sight of her home. She knows it’s a nice house; she also knows it wouldn’t be nearly so nice without all of Trevor’s touches. She watches as Mildred notices the half-packed suitcase, her lips turning down slightly. 

“If you’d like to sit,” Gwendolyn says, and it comes out more clipped than she’d like, but Mildred shoots her a sunny smile and moves to the couch. Gwendolyn doesn’t follow. 

“Are you…?”

“No, I’ll stand.”

God, this is awkward. Gwendolyn knows it’s terribly awkward. And she hates it— she’d like to cross into Mildred’s space, pin her to the couch, convince her by any means possible or necessary to leave the state together, leave all this behind— 

But it won’t matter what she wants soon anyways. 

“You checked out of the motel,” Mildred says, and Gwendolyn notes that she’s softened her voice, pitched it up a bit. Trying not to be threatening. She crosses her arms over her torso and squeezes her arms. “I tried to telephone you.”

It’s almost a question. Gwendolyn doesn’t want to answer it. 

“The governor’s fired me, Mildred.” She knows it sounds scolding. She doesn’t really care. “My career is over. I’m going home to Connecticut to live with my mother. Maybe I can get a job at the five-and-dime.” 

She doesn’t mean to blame Mildred— except maybe she does. She’d been fine until this woman came along, fine living her life of a strong career and one night stands and a lavender marriage. She’d been fine going to the Sappho bar, taking long drives, exhausting herself with work until she just didn’t feel anymore. It had been fine. 

And then Mildred Ratched had come into her life and disrupted that. Reminded her that maybe she could have something longer than a one night stand. Reminded her how beautiful the world could be.

She watches Mildred’s face fall, contort slightly with confusion. 

“May I offer you some tea?” 

Her voice is too soft to be sarcastic, she realizes. Her throat is burning too much to convey anger properly. Her eyes sting and she thinks the only thing stopping her from absolutely losing it is the pressure of her own fingers on her arms. 

Mildred looks lost, her lips slightly parted, brown eyes searching for answer. She fumbles with a response, not sure what the proper reaction is, and Gwendolyn knows this look of lost footing. It matches the one she’d worn the last time she had on this blouse, at the Sappho bar— 

“I would love some, thank you.” 

The fake smile Gwendolyn has painted on falls. She can feel her resolve break for a moment, but then it’s back, and the anger and grief that come with it are pushing through her at full force. She’s had too much time alone with her own thoughts, too much time to think about all the flaws in her own judgement. How had she missed Mildred’s manipulation? How had she so swiftly, so terribly, fallen in love with this woman who seemed to care so little for her in return? How had she become so contented with living on scraps of affection? 

“You lied to me from the very beginning,” she starts, “you— used me as a way to keep your brother alive.” She’s never hated the softness in her voice so much. She sounds like some school teacher, not a career speaker. 

Mildred rises quickly, her hands rolled up into fists at her side. “I didn’t lie to you.” Gwendolyn shakes her head and she watches the brief moment of courage fade from Mildred’s face. “I just— I couldn’t tell you everything right away—“ she’s moving towards Gwendolyn, and she just can’t do this. She can’t be this close, can’t listen to words she knows will soften her until she’s putty in the nurse’s hands. She can’t do that to either of them. 

“Mildred!” It freezes the younger woman, a small inhale on her lips. She almost falters, takes a step away to regain her own footing. “You lied! Until the lie didn’t serve you anymore.” She’s well and truly angry now, the warmth of the emotion running through her muscles until her arm flies away from her body. Mildred’s hands come to clench together in front of her, and Gwendolyn tries to ignore it. “Then you decided to tell the truth.” 

She can see Mildred’s jaw drop open to speak, reaches out to stop her, jumps on her words. “And I understand that the world has not been kind to you,” she starts, her voice bubbling with tears that are building. She doesn’t want to hurt Mildred, but she has to. “And I am sorry for that, I truly am, but that doesn’t give you the right to dissemble at every possible opportunity to the people around you whose only mistake was to care about you.”

Gwendolyn knows she’s shaking. It’s a killer tell, one she’s always had, and she hates it. She hates all of this, just wants it to be over. 

The truth is, her mother has been dead for years. Her father, too. She just wants to return to Madison, live near the beach, waste her days away on the shore of Hammonasset. Leave the world peacefully, quietly, be a footnote in history no one bothers to read. 

She wants to shove her dreams down so she doesn’t have to grieve not living them out. 

Mildred’s eyes are watering, and Gwendolyn hates that. She wishes the woman hadn’t shown up, or that she’d had the strength to close the door in her face. She wishes she could have just let Mildred hate her and her secrets. 

“I know that,” she rasps through her tears. She reaches for Gwendolyn and Gwendolyn’s heart speeds up, forcing the words from her throat. 

“Do you?” It’s shrill, and Mildred’s face falls again. “Because I honestly don’t think that you do.” She’s firing jabs at Mildred at this point, and Mildred winces with each one. Maybe if she fires sharply enough, Mildred will leave in a huff, and she can go back to her dark spaces and hurt. 

But Mildred seems to pick up her courage, stepping forward, hands coming up to rest against Gwendolyn. Gwendolyn practically jumps out of her skin— she wants this so bad, she does, but she can’t. She can’t do this to them and lose it. “My feelings for you are real.” She slaps Mildred’s hands away, watches the look on Mildred’s face turn a little desperate. 

“I don’t think…” Well, she does. She believes that Mildred believes she has feelings. But she can’t bank everything on a lie, even if it’s one told to herself. “That you have any idea what your feelings are.” Gwendolyn can feel herself shifting nervously from foot to foot and she hates it. She wishes she had courage now. She wishes she could tell Mildred everything, but she can’t. “Because you have been lying for so long— It’s second nature to you. You even lie to yourself.” Mildred is stock still now and Gwendolyn hates it, hates the frozen look on her face, but she has to go in for the kill. “Well your lying and your selfishness have cost me…” 

How is she supposed to say it all? 

“Everything.” It’s a breath, because that’s all she can bear from the truth. 

She turns away, hoping that if tears fall, Mildred won’t see them. She can see tears in Mildred’s eyes, and she has to get away from them before they soften her. 

“I don’t know what my life is anymore.” It all comes tumbling out, and she leans on the mantelpiece for support. “I don’t understand how I got so— tangled up in you! And I don’t understand whether my feelings for you are real.” Mildred is moving towards her now, and God, she wants to bury herself in this woman, that prayerful look in her eyes, but she can’t. She can’t. Not when it would mean so much pain down the road for them both. 

They’ve both endured enough pain to last a lifetime. 

“And you waltzed into my heart, and I cannot get you out.” 

Her voice breaks. So does her heart. But the truth is out there, and she can’t take it back. 

“Gwendolyn,” Mildred rumbles, her hand coming up. It rests gently on Gwendolyn’s arm and she feels her eyes flutter. “I love you,” she says, her voice cracking under the strain of it— 

And she can’t, she can’t do this, she can’t bear if this is another lie, and she can’t bear if it’s the truth. If it’s a lie, it’s so painful to think this woman could pretend this. But if it’s the truth, it’s worse, because nothing can spare them the impending doom. 

She backs away and Mildred calls her name again. Her throat is too tight to speak, so she just points at her, unable to breathe around the tightness in her chest. Words crackle in her throat for a moment before she can speak. “I don’t even know what I’m supposed to say to that. And anyway, I don’t believe you!” 

Mildred’s face is so painful to see. Her eyes, round and big and nothing like Gwendolyn has ever seen, are full of tears. She’s got her bottom lip sucked in, trying to press the emotions down. A tear slips out and she brushes it away, gestures in the air like she’s trying to wave away something. 

Gwendolyn waits. She can’t do anything else. She really hopes she’s wrong, but she can’t do this. 

Mildred doesn’t look at her when she starts. “What I kept from you… that was not easy for me to do.” She’s back to looking at Gwendolyn, and Gwendolyn can tell she’s not lying. She wouldn’t be so distraught if it were a lie. She’d be calmer, pleasanter, more placating. “I wanted to tell you everything,” she says, and it’s like it’s exploding from her body, shaking her apart. Gwendolyn can’t look at her like this anymore. “And I understand how awful that would make you feel, how used you must have felt.” She shakes her head. 

Gwendolyn thinks she might actually understand, and her chest aches with it. 

“The lies I told to get into that hospital—“ her voice cracks. “To get closer to Edmund…”

Gwendolyn wants to scoff. It comes back to Edmund, doesn’t it? Will it ever not? Will she ever…

“Those were amoral acts, and I understand that completely.” Her voice shifts from that begging tone to the brutal one Gwendolyn can handle. The angry one, the same one she’d heard when Mildred rejected her. “But you must understand that I had no choice. And if I had to, I would do it all over again.” 

She can handle this Mildred, but she doesn’t like her, and she tilts her face away. She’d like it all to stop, really. 

Mildred’s voice goes soft again, and it’s jarring, and her hands come up to frame Gwendolyn’s face. “I wish you could leave the pain I’ve caused behind us.”

Gwendolyn feels a tear roll down her cheek, feels all the fight go out of her. All she really wants is for Mildred to hold her, tell her everything will be okay, and this is so close, and her hands on Gwendolyn’s skin feels so right. “Let go of the resentment, the suspicion.” Her voice starts to break, and she’s begging Gwendolyn to believe her—

“My feelings for you are the truest thing in me.” 

Gwendolyn knows what it feels like to have a rib crack. One of hers had when she’d been shot. She knows that pain, and it’s nothing like this pain, because this pain starts in the center and radiates through her whole body until she can’t breathe, can’t speak. 

“I love you, do you hear me? I love you.” Mildred’s been reduced to a whisper, and her fingers slide along Gwendolyn’s skin, and Gwendolyn wishes this moment would last forever. It has to, because she can’t face the future and lose this, can’t add another dream to her pile of things she can’t have. 

There’s a beat before Mildred speaks again. “Doctor Hannover is dead.” 

“He’s—“ she grabs Mildred’s hands away from her, heart dropping, burn replaced by cold. Mildred isn’t her brother, she can’t be. “No, no, no—“ 

She’s barely aware of her voice, and she can’t let go of Mildred, but what if? “Please… tell me—“ she can’t look at the nurse— “tell me you didn’t—“ 

“No,” Mildred says immediately, “No.” She chuckles, reaches for Gwendolyn’s face again. Her smile is so beautiful. “No, I had nothing to do with it, but…” they sway for a moment and Gwendolyn hangs on that _but_. “As a result, I have come into some money.” 

Gwendolyn pushes herself away again. She can’t have Mildred proposing solutions to a problem she doesn’t know exists yet. “I— I don’t want to hear what I’m sure are all the sordid particulars.” She’s shielding her face, but she’s also telling the truth. She doesn’t want to hear them. Not now. 

“Gwendolyn, it means we can— we can run away together, you, and—“ 

A heart cracking open feels a lot like a rib cracking under metal. 

She can’t look at Mildred. 

“And my answer to you, Mildred, is no.” 

She finally finds the courage to look at her, look at this woman who has so thoroughly ruined her. “That is not what my life is going to be.” 

“Our life,” Mildred tries to correct with a smile. The poor thing still believes in fairytales, but Gwendolyn is no princess, no knight, no king or queen, and Mildred doesn’t get to write this story. 

“It is not!” 

“Why?” 

“Alright? Do you hear me? That is not what my life is going to be—“

“Why not?” 

God, she’s starting to look angry again, and Gwendolyn knows, but she has to give her this out, push her away, so she can hate her now and forget that she loves her and find someone who won’t die on her in a month’s time. 

“It just isn’t.” 

“Why?!” 

“Because I had an x-ray yesterday,” Gwendolyn practically yells, and the fear courses through her and chills her anger. Mildred’s face morphs to confusion. “Because the doctor wanted to see how my lung was healing.” She’s slowing down, and it hurts, and Mildred is the first person she’s told. 

This was supposed to be hers alone to carry. She was supposed to be strong enough for that. But God, if Mildred does love her, maybe Mildred deserves to know. 

“And he found a tumor the size of a walnut inside my left breast.” 

“What?” It’s barely a breath. 

“And I don’t have long.”

She hopes Mildred understands, hopes she’s aware that she’s asking her to leave, go find a real home, a real love, someone to grow old with. 

But Mildred never fails to surprise her. “We will find someone,” she whispers. 

“We?” Gwendolyn’s voice breaks, and she grips Mildred’s wrist, trying to find an anchor in a world that’s swimming around her. 

“We’ll find a doctor.” She nods against Gwendolyn’s shaky _no_ , her caring side winning out, “Yes, we. You have to.” 

“You have to stop—“ 

“We have to— listen to me, God damn it—“

She can’t take the way Mildred’s voice is breaking, can’t take the way everything she wants is so close, and she know she can’t have it, and God, it hurts, it hurts, make it— 

“You have to stop!” 

Mildred jumps slightly, lets Gwendolyn advance on her. “There is nothing that anyone can do!” 

Mildred frames her face again, voice dropping to a soothing whisper. “Okay,” she breathes, a small smile gracing her lips, “okay.” She pulls Gwendolyn closer. “Okay.” 

And Gwendolyn is exhausted. She’s put forward every protest, every rejection she can think of, and she wants to crack her chest open and say _here, take it, take my heart and carry it with you, I love you, please when I go be with me._

“I’m gonna find someone,” Mildred says, and she’s so sure of herself despite the tears rolling down her cheeks, “a doctor. We have all the money in the world.” She swallows around the tightness that’s come into her voice, smiles at Gwendolyn. “We will go to the ends of the Earth if we have to.”

And Gwendolyn knows she’s gone. She knows she’d follow Mildred there, if it just made Mildred happy, even for a small moment. All the fight has left her body and she just wants to give in, fall into Mildred, hold her down and beg her to stay. 

“I love you,” she whispers against Gwendolyn’s shaking head, “do you hear me? I will not lose you.” 

It’s not a battle cry, it’s just a statement, and try as Gwendolyn does, she can’t find it false. It echoes in her ears, in her throat, in her chest. 

She can barely speak when she opens her eyes, baffled by the calm and shining love that radiates from the woman holding her. “Oh, Mildred.” Mildred smiles, ignores her own tears to swipe gently at Gwendolyn’s. “I love you,” she breathes, bringing a hand up and around Mildred’s jaw. 

Mildred echoes her immediately, without thought. “I love you.” 

And Gwendolyn wants to believe it’s all a dream, or a lie, because it might hurt less, the thought that she won’t have this for long. But Mildred is thumbing at the collar of her shirt, glancing at her lips and her eyes, holding her steady. She’s letting Gwendolyn wrap an arm around her waist, stroke her lip with a trembling thumb. She’s looking at Gwendolyn with this determined gaze, like Gwendolyn isn’t going anywhere. 

And Gwendolyn is starting to believe her. 

They call it falling in love, and Gwendolyn falls into a kiss, presses her lips to Mildred’s. She savors the taste of her, and she’s happy with just that, a simple touch of soft against soft. She could carry that with her the rest of her life and be happy. 

But Mildred surges forward, hand tightening against Gwendolyn’s shirt, lets out a sob of air. And Gwendolyn can’t deny her, presses another kiss to her lips, sliding her arms up to hold Mildred close. She can feel Mildred shaking, and she gently squeezes the back of her head, slides their lips together again. Mildred is gasping for air. 

She’s a little clumsy, but Gwendolyn doesn’t care. She will take all the clumsiness in the world just to hold Mildred like this. Mildred’s lips still against her, body pressed up tightly to hers, hands gripping at Gwendolyn’s back and arm. 

She lets out another little sob and Gwendolyn pulls back, rests their foreheads together. “I’m sorry,” she breathes, and Mildred sobs again, shakes her head. “I am.”

“Don’t,” Mildred hiccups, brushing away tears Gwendolyn hadn’t realized were falling. “You shouldn’t be. It’s not your fault.”

Gwendolyn tilts her chin up to press a kiss to Mildred’s cheek, hand around the back of her head. Mildred leans into her. Her hands fist up in Gwendolyn’s shirt. “I love you,” Mildred hisses out.

“You don’t have to keep repeating it,” Gwendolyn says, swallowing. “I believe you. And I love you.”

Mildred squeezes her eyes shut, tears rolling down her cheeks. Gwendolyn moves her hand to grip her chin. She considers her for a moment, waits until Mildred looks up at her, then presses kisses to Mildred’s cheeks to dry her tears. Mildred closes her eyes and sighs, her shoulders coming back down.

“Please unpack,” Mildred begs. Gwendolyn pauses, amused for a moment at the little marks all over Mildred’s face. She’s sure her face is a similarly reddened mess. “Please don’t leave, not without me.”

Gwendolyn’s chest tightens again and she breathes in shakily. “Okay.” Mildred seems to sag against her in relief, and then the nurse is turning her face, bringing Gwendolyn’s lips back to hers. She breathes in at the slow slide of lips together, a thrill shooting through her at Mildred nipping at her lower lip.

“I love you,” Mildred breathes again, holding Gwendolyn close, “I will not lose you now.”

And Gwendolyn thinks she’s telling the truth.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading, I hope I haven't wounded y'all too badly. Drop me a line below <3


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